Displays such as cathode ray tube (CRT) displays, liquid crystal displays (LCDs), plasma display panels (PDPs), and electroluminescence (EL) displays are required to have various functions, such as protection from damages, prevention of outdoor-light reflection, and protection from stains, on their surfaces.
One means of imparting a function of preventing outdoor-light reflection is a low reflection (LR) treatment wherein a material whose refractive index is different from that of a display component is applied onto the display surface, and thereby light reflection is suppressed owing to the interference effect between the light reflected on the display surface and the light reflected on the coating surface.
In general, however, the reflectivities are different between the reflection at the interface between the air and the coating surface and the reflection at the interface between the coating surface and the display surface. Thus, these reflected light beams are not perfectly removed and the reflection preventing effect is insufficient. As a result, only performing the LR treatment causes reflection of surrounding light at a certain reflectivity, so that images of a light source such as a fluorescent light appear on the display and cause hard-to-see display. In order to prevent such problems, the following technique is proposed; that is, an antiglare (AG) treatment, in which a fine uneven pattern is formed on the display surface to suppress outdoor-light reflection by taking advantage of the light-scattering effect, is further performed on the surface, so that light is scattered and images of a light source such as a fluorescent light is faded out. The treatment combining the LR treatment and the AG treatment mentioned here is also referred to as an AGLR treatment.
In addition to the method in which a fine uneven pattern is formed on the display surface, examples of the light-scattering method include: a method in which an antiglare layer with particles for light scattering, such as silica, dispersed thereon is formed on a polarizer of a liquid crystal display device (for example, see Patent Document 1); a method in which a black mesh using carbon, for example, is formed on the surface of a display device (for example, see Patent Document 2); a method in which a solidified phase keeping a droplet shape is formed on a glass substrate and another different phase is formed on the solidified phase utilizing the sol-gel process to form a projecting film (for example, see Patent Document 3); and a method in which an uneven structure is formed by polymer phase separation, and thereby an antiglare film is formed which has a surface regularity causing part of transmission light to show grid-like diffraction (for example, see Patent Document 4).
As a method for achieving low reflection on the display surface other than the AGLR treatment, a moth-eye (moth's eye) structure is recently being focused on because it can achieve an effect of greatly preventing reflection without light diffraction. The moth-eye structure provides an uneven pattern finer than the pattern by the AG treatment on the surface of an article which is a target of an antireflection treatment. The uneven pattern has projections and depressions each arranged at an interval of not longer than light wavelength (for example, 400 nm or shorter) without any space. Thereby, the structure makes the change in refractive index at the interface between the outside (air) and the film surface apparently continuous, so that the structure allows almost all light beams to pass through regardless of the refractive index interface and most of light reflection on the article surface is cancelled (for example, see Patent Documents 5 and 6).    Patent Document 1: JP 11-281818 A    Patent Document 2: JP 3-196451 A    Patent Document 3: JP 2003-84106 A    Patent Document 4: JP 2007-187746 A    Patent Document 5: JP 2001-517319 T    Patent Document 6: JP 2003-531962 T